Catechism
Gems of the The Small and Large Catechism: By Rev. William M. Cwirla
It’s so easy to take the Small Catechism for granted.
Most of us spent a year or two memorizing it for confirmation class and now it sits up on the shelf like a trophy, never to be opened again. What a great sadness that is!
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The Small Catechism and its companion Large Catechism are two of the greatest documents ever written in the history of the church. They are the heart and soul of the Lutheran tradition, embodying what everyone must know and confess to be a Christian. Together with the Scriptures and the hymnal, the catechisms are the core of the Lutheran “catechetical method”—how we hand on the faith to the next generation. They ask and answer the important questions: “What does this mean?” and “Where is this written?” Armed with nothing more than the Small Catechism, you could teach another person the Christian faith. No wonder our Confessions call the Small and Large Catechism, “the layman’s Bible,” for they “contain everything which Holy Scripture discusses at greater length and which a Christian must know for his salvation.” Luther wrote the Small Catechism after visiting the congregations of Saxony with Philip Melanchthon. They were appalled by the conditions they observed. The common people had virtually no knowledge of the Christian faith and their pastors were no better. Many people didn’t even
know the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostles’ Creed or the Ten Commandments. To look at them, you wouldn’t even know they were Christians! And this, only eleven years after Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door! You can imagine Luther’s disappointment. For several years, Luther had urged others to write a simple catechism for the common people, but nothing happened. After the Saxon visitation, Luther decided to do it himself. He made a simple booklet out of the core texts of the Christian faith: The Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and provided simple explanations that were easy to memorize. These were even printed as wall charts—a huge innovation for the day. The Large Catechism is sermons on the Small Catechism, preached during 1529. Many of the common people couldn’t read very well, so by memorizing these texts and discussing them with their households, they could teach the Christian faith to their children and servants. The method is really quite ingenious. In his
